As Asia’s financial services industry embraces agentic AI, we’re exploring the region’s transformation and highlighting the partners leading this shift in the first part of a two-part blog series.
“It looks like you’re writing a letter. Would you like help?”
So said Clippy, the enthusiastic paperclip assistant from Microsoft Word. Always ready to offer help, Clippy was, in many ways, the initial foray into AI for Microsoft—though he served more as an assistant with relatively limited capabilities rather than a strategic collaborator.
Fast forward to today, and we have entered the age of agentic AI, which can now perform autonomous tasks on behalf of a user or another system. At Microsoft, we firmly believe that agents—combined with Microsoft 365 Copilot and human ambition—can deliver real AI differentiation for our partners and customers. Gone are the days of passive AI systems; today, they are integral to strategic decision-making and driving transformation.
The growing momentum of AI in Asia
In Asia—a region with over 4.7 billion people, rapid digital adoption, and hyper-diverse financial landscapes—the need for scalable, intelligent, and agentic solutions has never been more urgent. The transition to AI is unfolding at unprecedented speed: according to IDC, Asia’s spending on AI systems is expected to reach $175 billion by 2028, with financial services—banking and insurance in particular—accounting for a significant share.
Additionally, the Microsoft 2025 Work Trend Index found that employees across the Asia region are increasingly relying on AI to enhance areas where human capabilities fall short. Key advantages cited include continuous availability (38%), the ability to deliver speed and quality through machine-driven processes (31%), and an endless stream of creative ideas (30%).
Empowering enterprises with Azure AI Foundry
Azure AI Foundry represents a bold leap in democratizing enterprise-grade AI development. The unified platform empowers developers, IT administrators, and software development companies (formerly known as independent software vendors) to build, customize, and manage AI applications and agents with even more flexibility.
Azure AI Foundry integrates over 1,000 generative AI models—including those from OpenAI, Meta, Mistral, and Hugging Face—with trusted tools like GitHub, Microsoft Visual Studio, and Microsoft Copilot Studio. It offers a full-stack AI toolchain for data grounding, orchestration, debugging, and deployment, all underpinned by enterprise-grade governance and AI safeguards. These include bias detection and mitigation, explainability features, privacy-preserving mechanisms, audit trails for compliance with regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and human-in-the-loop workflows to ensure oversight and accountability.
Notably, the Azure AI Foundry Agent Service extends this capability with the use of third-party application programming interfaces (APIs) (such as InsureMO for insurance quotations) so AI agents can orchestrate complex workflows across industries like finance, HR, and legal, while maintaining ethical and transparent AI operations.
Agentic AI in the financial services industry
From automating accounting tasks to reducing processing costs for insurance policies, Microsoft partners, especially software development companies, are using agentic AI to help transform the financial services industry (FSI) in Asia. Strategic use of agents is empowering organizations to streamline operations, enhance decision-making, and drive innovation autonomously, showcasing the vast potential of AI in addressing diverse financial challenges across Asia.
Let’s explore how agentic AI is transforming FSI in Asia through real-world stories that show what’s possible with agents.
InsureMO, a digital insurance infrastructure leader, aimed to tackle key challenges in the insurance industry: digitizing user journeys, reducing manual data entry, and modernizing legacy systems. Their AI-powered solution, developed in partnership with Microsoft, uses Azure technologies like Azure Cognitive Services, Semantic Kernel-based architecture, and secure access through Azure AD to deliver hyper-personalized insurance experiences. InsureMO's action APIs, available to agents built in Azure AI Foundry Agent Service, embed insurance intelligence directly into workflows. The platform achieved impressive results, including a 20 to 30% boost in policy application conversions and a 25% reduction in call center and manual processing costs. By reshaping the insurance experience, InsureMO drives real-time personalization, enhancing customer trust and engagement while minimizing human effort. The result is an innovative, scalable insurance ecosystem with plans for expanded offerings and multi-region rollouts.
“Insurance decisions often hinge on timely, accurate and contextually relevant information—especially when it comes to quoting across products like car, home, travel, and small and medium enterprises (SME). By making our action APIs available to agents built in Azure AI Foundry Agent Service, we’re helping customers embed insurance intelligence directly into their workflows. We’re working with Microsoft on this integration because we see real potential in how AI agents can simplify complex processes and support faster, more effective outcomes for insurers and their customers.”
- Augustine Tay, Corporate Senior Vice President, InsureMO
This solution is accessible through the Action APIs and Microsoft marketplace, part of the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program.
Active is a cloud-based platform offered by Business Fitness, operating in Australia and the UK. It utilizes Microsoft AI and intelligent automation to significantly overhaul accounting workflows. Enterprise customers have reported productivity improvements of up to 28% reduction in the time required to complete compliance jobs, progressing toward its 50% goal. Additionally, many accounting firms have seen productivity increases of 20% without expanding staff, addressing one of the industry's primary challenges—a shortage of accountants. The key challenge lies in adapting to the fast-evolving AI landscape while making sure its use yields innovative, practical, and accurate results requiring minimal review. Active uses Azure AI technologies such as Azure OpenAI, AI Search, and Document Intelligence to unlock emerging capabilities for advanced semantic search and automated document analysis. Core services run on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), allowing for the scalable deployment of AI models, while Azure SQL elastic pools and vector databases manage relational and AI data. Built on Azure, the platform seamlessly integrates with Microsoft 365, delivering robust and globally accessible solutions.
You can find this solution on the Microsoft marketplace.
Brilliance Financial Technology (BXFIN), which is based in Australia, has created a leading deal management and profitability solution for commercial banks with research and development to help banks acquire reliable environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data. BXFIN enables these banks to better manage client risk and align their portfolios with sustainability goals. Existing methods were inconsistent, prompting the adoption of AI-driven solutions. BXFIN’s DPX platform, hosted on Microsoft Azure to facilitate quicker deployment and scalability, uses Azure Document Intelligence to optimize document analysis and automate tasks, ultimately streamlining workflows and improving accuracy. Through AI envisioning workshops and Microsoft accelerators, BXFIN developed a demonstrator for a bank, resulting in a successful contract. BXFIN anticipates a 30% revenue increase by 2025, gaining three new tier-one global banks and transitioning three existing clients to the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. Their AI solution reduces repetitive manual tasks, improves ESG data accuracy, and enables the summarization of assessments tailored to diverse personas, paving the way for greater adoption of AI in banking and sustainable practices.
This solution is now available on Microsoft marketplace.
The Microsoft journey from early AI experimentation to today’s agentic paradigm is not just a story of technological evolution; it’s a story of empowering people, partners, and organizations to do more with less and dream bigger than ever.
You can learn more by exploring the resources below.
Campaigns:
Training: